Jack Dorsey’s fintech company Block is the latest to turn to job cuts. As a result, the recently announced Block layoffs are expected to affect around 931 current employees. Block’s downsizing plans were revealed in an email from the CEO to the workers, where he reassured the recipients that the intention behind the layoffs was not to reach “a specific financial target, replacing folks with AI, or changing our headcount cap.”
Instead, the company intends to raise the bar on its goals and performance and see better results in its business later down the line. This is Block’s second round of layoffs in just over a year, after the company eliminated around 1,000 employees from its ranks in January last year.
Block’s downsizing plans come as the company stocks have been down 29% this year, with no sign of recovery on the horizon. Unfortunately for workers, all setbacks tend to be addressed by taking the staff out first, and Jack Dorsey’s intention of executing job cuts in 2025 is no different.
The Block layoffs will affect around 931 employees, but CEO Dorsey states the cuts are essential to raise the bar on performance (Image: Freepik)
The Block Layoffs Aren’t a Surprise, Job Cuts Are Occurring in Every Industry
First things first, what do we know about Block’s layoff strategy? Block Inc. is looking at immediate job cuts across its organization, and around 931 employees will be axed as a result. This amounts to nearly 8% of its workforce based on December 2024 headcount numbers that suggested the company had around 11,300 employees.
Block, Inc. is an American financial technology company that was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey. The company operates multiple platforms that you may be familiar with, including money transfer platform Cash App, point-of-sale/payments firm Square, BNPL service Afterpay, and streaming platform TIDAL.
The company’s multiple business dealings help bring in success from different angles, and it employs a large number of workers to keep its apps up and running without issue. Block’s layoffs strategy affects everyone in one way or another.
Which Employees Are Being Targeted by Block’s Layoff Strategy?
The email breaks down some of the numbers, suggesting that three broad sections of its staff will be affected by the cuts. First, the company revealed that it was laying off around 391 workers for unexplained “off-strategy” reasons.
Another 460 workers are being cut due to underperformance as the reasons for their termination. This primarily refers to workers who scored below the company’s internal performance target metrics or are growing closer to it.
Finally, 80 employees being cut are from the managers’ roles, and this is intended to flatten out the hierarchical structure at the organization and the layers of reporting that occur. The email referred to it as “flattening our org to a max depth of innercore+4,” likely referring to the internal teams.
Along with the cuts, around 800 open job positions across the organization are now being closed to prevent any additions to the company numbers. Finally, apart from the cuts and changes to the hiring plans, around 200 managers are to be reassigned to non-managerial roles.
Why Is Block Cutting 8% of Jobs?
Jack Dorsey’s layoff email was careful to explain that the Block layoffs are not occurring due to financial targets, AI preferences, or even due to a change in the headcount cap. The company had previously discussed capping their worker numbers at 12,000 until they felt the “growth of the business had meaningfully outpaced the growth of the company.” Numbers suggest that the organization was comfortably below its headcount hardlines.
Instead, the Block job cuts are designed to cater to the company’s “needs around strategy, raising the bar and acting faster on performance, and flattening [the] org so [it] can move faster and with less abstraction.”
The statements indicate that Dorsey and the Block team believe that cutting down on the inflated ranks of the organization might help speed up work and progress at the company, eliminating the unnecessary levels to the teams in the process. The CEO also explained that the decision to execute the cuts all at once was only fair to the workers and the company to make and commit to the goal of staying ahead of the “transformational moment our industry is in.”
Block’s Square Financial Services are currently in the process of being expanded and are branching out into new categories. It is likely that Block is determined to streamline the business in preparation for it, aiding in building out the up-and-coming segments of the organization. Layoffs are a strategy frequently used to boost shareholder trust in the organization and allow it to raise the stock prices up by a degree, so this could be part of the reason for Block’s downsizing plans as well.
Diving Into Jack Dorsey’s Unique Leadership In Relation to the Block Layoffs
While the lowercase format of the layoff letter was certainly a choice, it is also apparent that Dorsey is serious about his intention to get the job cuts out of the way and give shareholders something to hold on to. The email begins with a statement of honesty, “i want to give you all the straight facts,” and concludes with a mention of the shareholders “we will continue to honor that by increasing our value to our customers, and therefore to all of our shareholders, including you.”
Netizens online have pointed out the company’s decision to conduct large-scale layoffs and then accuse employees of being “underperforming” in the same breath. The performance terminations and the metrics used to determine how many will lose their jobs have been brought into question, but these are data points we’re unlikely to be given access to right now.
Despite the claim of giving employees straight facts, the implication of “off strategy” teams and firing people “trending towards below” performance rating doesn’t necessarily give workers the full picture.
Jack Dorsey’s layoff email also mentions the company’s intention to “build like a startup again,” but for a business of this scale with its 11,000 employees, this is hardly a realistic scenario. The mismatch between the CEO’s plans and the ground realities of the organization have certainly been seen as a misstep. If the overall strategy, direction, and feasibility of the plan are not cleared up now, more cuts and layoffs could be foreseen in the company’s future.
Layoffs at Block, HelloFresh, HP, TikTok
Block’s downsizing attempts are far from the only instances of layoffs occurring across the US. The auto industry is facing the threat of excruciating tariffs that could lead to massive cuts across the industry. On a smaller scale, we’ve seen HelloFresh also cut around 273 positions in Texas after its Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alerted us to the news.
HP is also looking at cutting 2,500 jobs to meet its goal of $350 million in gross savings by its 2027 fiscal year. Who else is looking at job cuts? TikTok. While the fate of the app’s US business remains unknown, we’ve seen evidence to suggest that it is being forced to explore job cuts in Ireland.
Although 2025 has only just begun, there have been extensive changes across industries and financial markets, with layoffs being the only constant. Will this trend die down once we have a better understanding of the economic policies being explored right now? We’ll have to see. What we’re more curious about is the employee reactions to the Block job cuts and what the company is doing to aid in their transition to their next source of employment.
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